I don't believe a backport of the newest thinkpad driver will, alone, solve the volume notification problem. The new driver will create an ALSA mixer for the speakers, but a daemon is needed to listen for the mixer events and create notifications.
I don't believe a backport of the newest thinkpad driver will, alone, solve the volume notification problem. The new driver will create an ALSA mixer for the speakers, but a daemon is needed to listen for the mixer events and create notifications.